“Last chance, Rubra,” she said. “Tell me where the boyo is, or I start getting serious.” The block’s screen remained blank. “You overheard what Patricia said. I know you did, because you’re a sneaky little shit. You’ve been manipulating me for a while now. I’m always told where he is, and he’s always gone when I get there. You’re helping him as much as you’re helping me, aren’t you? Probably trying to frighten him into cooperating with you. Was that it? Well, not anymore, Rubra, because Patricia has changed everything; we’re playing big boys’ rules now. I don’t have to be careful, I don’t have to respect your precious, delicate structure. It was fun going one on one against all those little bastards you stashed around the place. I enjoyed myself. But you were cheating the whole time. Funny, that’s what Dariat warned us about right from the start.” She reached the roof, and walked to the edge above the crowd. “You going to tell me?”
The screen printed: THOSE LITTLE DEADNIGHT GIRLS THAT COME HERE, YOU REALLY ENJOY WHAT YOU DO WITH THEM, DON’T YOU, DYKE?
Bonney dropped the processor block as if it were a piece of used toilet paper. “Game over, Rubra. You lose; I’m going to use nukes to crack you in half.”
Dariat, I think you’d better listen to this.
What now?
Bonney, as usual. But things have just acquired an unpleasant edge. I don’t think Kiera should have left her unsupervised.
Dariat hooked into the observation routines in time to see Bonney raise her hands for silence. The crowd gazed up at her expectantly.
“We’ve got the power of genies,” she said. “You can grant yourself every wish you want. And we still have to live like dogs out in these shantytowns, grabbing what food we can, whipped into line, told where we can and can’t go. Rubra’s done that to us. We have starships for fuck’s sake. We can travel to another star system in less time than it takes your heart to beat once. But if you want to go from here to the endcap, you have to walk. Why? Because that shit Rubra won’t let us use the tubes. And up until now, we’ve let him get away with it. Well, not anymore.”
Passionate lady,dariat said uncomfortably.
Psycho lady, more like. They’re not going to disobey her, they wouldn’t dare. She’s going to marshal them together and send them after you. I can’t keep you ahead of an entire habitat of possessed hunting you. For once, boy, I’m not lying.
Yeah. I can see that.dariat went over to the fire at the back of the cave. It had almost burnt out, leaving a pyramid of coals cloaked in a powder of fine grey ash. He stood looking at it, feeling the slumbering heat contained within the pink fragments.
I have to decide. I can’t beat Rubra. And Rubra will be destroyed by Kiera when she returns. For thirty years I would have welcomed that. Thirty fucking years. My entire life.
But he’s willing to sacrifice his mental integrity, to join my thoughts to his. He’s going to abandon two centuries of his belief that he can go it alone.
Tatiana stirred on the blanket and sat up, bracelets chinking noisily. Sleepy confusion drained from her face. “That was a strange dream.” She gave him a shrewd glance. “But then this is a strange time, isn’t it?”
“What was your dream?”
“I was in a universe which was half light, half darkness. And I was falling out of the light. Then Anastasia caught me, and we started to fly back up again.”
“Sounds like your salvation.”
“What’s the matter?”
“Things are changing. That means I have to decide what to do. And I don’t want to, Tatiana. I’ve spent thirty years not deciding. Thirty years telling myself this was the time I was waiting for. I’ve been a kid for thirty years.”
Tatiana rose and stood beside him. He refused to meet her gaze, so she put an arm lightly on his shoulder. “What do you have to decide?”
“If I should help Rubra; if I should join him in the neural strata and turn this into a possessed habitat.”
“He wants that?”
“I don’t think so. But he’s like me, there’s not much else either of us can do. The game’s over, and we’re running out of extra time.”
She stroked him absently. “Whatever you decide, I don’t want you to take me into account. There are too many issues at stake, big issues. Individuals don’t matter so much; and I had a good run against that Bonney. We annoyed her a lot, eh? That felt nice.”
“But individuals do matter. Especially you. It’s odd, I feel like I’ve come full circle. Anastasia always told me how precious a single life was. Now I have to decide your fate. And I can’t let you suffer, which is what’s going to happen if Rubra and I take on the possessed together. I’m responsible for her death, I can’t have yours on my hands as well. How could I ever face her with that weighing on my heart? I have to be true to her. You know I do.” He tilted his head back, his voice raised in anger. “Do you think you’ve won?”
I never even knew we were fighting until this possession happened,rubra said sadly. You know what hopes I had for you in the old days, even though you never shared them. You know I never wanted anything to spoil my dreams for you. You were the golden prince, the chosen one. Fate stopped you from achieving your inheritance. That’s what Anastasia was, for you and for me. Fate. You would call it an act of Thoale.
You believe all this was destined to be?
I don’t know. All I know is that our union is the last chance either of us has to salvage something from all this shit. So now you have to ask yourself, do the living have a right to live, or do the dead rule the universe?
That’s so like you, a loaded question.
I am what I am.
Not for very much longer.
You’ll do it?
Yes.
Come in then, I’ll accept you into the neural strata.
Not yet. I want to get Tatiana out first.
Why?
We may be virtually omnipotent after I come into the neural strata, but Bonney and the hellhawks still have the potential to damage the habitat shell very badly. I doubt we can quell them instantaneously, yet they will know the second I come into the neural strata. We are going to have a fight on our hands, I don’t want Tatiana hurt.
Very well, I will ask the Kohistan Consensus for a voidhawk to take her off.
You have a method?
I have a possible method. I make no promises. You’d better get yourselves along to the counter- rotating spaceport before Bonney starts her hunt.
It wasn’t merely a hunting party Bonney was organizing. She was keenly aware that Dariat could always flee her in the tube carriages, while she was reduced to chasing after him in one of the rentcop force’s open-top trucks. If Dariat was to be caught, then she would first have to cripple his mobility.
The crowd she had assembled was split into teams, given specific instructions, and dispatched to carry them out. Each major team had one of her deputies to ensure they didn’t waver.
Every powered vehicle in the habitat set out from the starscraper lobby, driving along the tracks through the overgrown grass. Most of them travelled directly to the other camps ringing starscraper lobbies, coercing their occupants into Bonney’s scheme. It was a domino effect, spreading rapidly around Valisk’s midsection.
Kiera had wanted the tubes left alone so that when they moved Valisk out of the universe the transport system could be brought back on-line to serve them. Bonney had no such inhibitions. The possessed made their reluctant way into the starscraper lobbies, and down into the first-floor stations. There they combined their energistic power and started to systematically smash the tube tunnels. Huge chunks of polyp were torn out of the walls and roof to crash down on the magnetic guide rail. Power cables were ripped up and shorted out. Carriages
